classic as were the groves where Orpheus piped and Sappho sang to the Acadians of old. As I sat beneath a spreading cedar sketching the unique villa, and scolded without stint by a querulous matronly cat-bird on one side and a vixen jenny-wren on the other, and observed the "lord of the manor" leading a little fair-haired grand-nephew to the river brink in search of daisies and butter-cups, I could not repress the thoughts so beautifully expressed in his own little story of The Wife: "I can wish you no better lot than to have a wife and children. If you are prosperous, they are to share your prosperity; if otherwise, they are to comfort you.... Though all abroad is darkness and humiliation, yet there is still a little world of love at home [for the husband] of which he is the monarch." *
The residence of Mr. Irving is upon the site of the famous "Wolfert's Roost" of the olden time. It w'as built by Wolfert Beker, an ancient burgher of the town, and afterward came into the possession of Jacob Van Tassel, one of the "race of hard-headed, hard-handed, stout-hearted Dutchmen, descended of the primitive Netherlanders." Van Tassel was the owner when the Revolution broke out, and was a stanch Whig. His house was in the midst of the debatable region called the Neutral Ground, and in the broad waters of the Tappan Sea ** in front, British vessels were almost constantly anchored. The Republican propensities of Van Tassel were well known, and as the Roost was a place of general ren-
* Sketch Book.
** Tappaan Zee, or Tappan Sea, was the name given by the Dutch to the expansion of the Hudson at this place.
"The Roost" a Castle.—Its Garrison.—Attack upon, and Defense of "the Roost."—Dobbs's Ferry.
dezvous for the American water-guards * and land-scouts, he was made liable to attacks from the enemy. He pierced his old mansion with musketry loop-holes, and took other measures for defense. His garrison, per se, consisted of his stout-hearted wife and a redoubtable sister, Nochie Van Wurmer, a match, as he said, for the "stoutest man in the country."